from the number of Jews in different European
countries before the war and immediately following it. He came to the
conclusion that there was a loss in lives of 5,978,000 (31), a figure which coincides with that advanced by Hoettl
and Wisliceny according to the confidences of Eichmann. This study was
published in 1946. The indirect method employed by Lestchinsky has been used
again by many other authors, the majority of whom have reached the same result
of about six million victims. Only the Englishman Gerald Reitlinger (43), who imposes upon himself systematically
and deliberately the adoption in each hypothesis of the lowest figures, gives
an estimate which even so varies between a minimum of 4,194,200 and a maximum
of 4.581,200. All of the authors, without exception, who utilize this indirect
method underscore the multiple objective difficulties that it presents. One
must take into consideration the uncertainties as to the number of the Jewish
population in many countries, the multiple border changes between States which
took place especially in Eastern Europe between 1939 and 1945, and the
important movements of human masses before the advances of the armies and the
perils of all kinds due to events of the war. It is therefore always a question
of approximations.

In 1951, Leon Poliakov (34, p.10) employed another procedure of direct estimation:
the adding up of the number of victims of the principal extermination camps
(Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno and Auschwitz) as well as those of the
"Einsatzgruppen." He thus reached a total of 5,300,000 without "taking into
account innumerable deaths by famine, by sickness, etc., in the vast ghettos of
Poland, in numerous work camps scattered across all of Europe." The idea of
this procedure of direct calculation is right: nevertheless, the number of
victims of the camps and of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) are known
only approximatively [sic], so that uncertainties are not always avoided. In
addition, as the author underscored, a no doubt considerable number of deaths
outside of the camps and the operations of the Einsatzgruppen escape it
completely.

What is nonetheless striking is the fact that whatever the
method employed, the figure obtained is always about six million; and on the
basis of a calculation deliberately limited to the lowest data, such as that of
G. Reitlinger, ones arrives even so at more than four million.

2.
Rassinier's figures and his methods

Rassinier, conscious of the
crushing weight which similar massacres cast on the reputation of the Third
Reich, its chiefs, its elite SS, sought by all possible means to demonstrate
that the six million victims were but a scandalous invention of omnipotent
world Judaism.

He consacrated [sic] more than two hundred pages to this
demonstration in his works. He came back to it constantly and poured out
quantities of astute arguments, cleverly constructed mistakes and false,
unfounded affirmations to reach the following conclusion: there were not six
million